The Marks of Death and Time
by eighteenlandry
Summary: Auron's life from the end of his time with the monks to the end of FFX: his journey with Jecht and Braska, his disillusionment and downfall, and the years after. (Quite a bit of angst, spoilers for FFX, and one-sided Auron/Jecht attraction. Nothing explicit, hence the T rating. I would write terrible lemons.)
1. PART I: Dusk- On a friendship, falling

A/N: First off, the obvious disclaimer: I don't own FFX. Well, not the rights. I do own a copy. And a version of X-2 I bought in Kuala Lumpur when I was eleven and then never played. Anyway. First actual story fanfic. Bit worried. I've discovered now that I'm a pretty slow updater: I'm still writing this, but I'm pretty busy and also a terrible procrastinator. Apologies in advance.

So in this version Auron is head over heels in love with Jecht and completely in denial about it, because someone put the idea in my head and I found it kind of funny and then a strangely appealing concept. I've given the admittedly _very_ sketchy canon basis for it when I find it. (I'd rather have said this later, but then people might read it and get up to that bit and then hate it. So.) It doesn't take up the whole story. Auron has plenty of other problems to be getting on with.

* * *

He did not see it.

They introduced her to him almost as an afterthought, or so he thought at the time. Kinoc, looking at him sideways with that peculiar half-smile he stiffened and froze after he came into real power; here, this is Mirada, my cousin, the high priest's daughter. It has been a long time and most of his early life is long hidden in the holes and patches of a mind worn and retained too long, and he no longer remembers her name well; he remembers it on paper, but not the sound, or any of the echoes it carried. She hated it for reasons she never told him, and neither he nor anyone else used it much unless her father was listening. She gave a different nickname every time she was asked for one.

"Not Mirada, you're mistaken today, Kinoc."

It had been in the courtyard in the Third Cloister, with the sundial and waterfall playing round the stones in the centre, and it was summer and noon and he had to blink to see properly.

"Really."

"I'm Shada."

"And who would that be?" Kinoc said, in the new drawl, the one he made now to mask confusion, or curiousity.

"That's a priestess," he said. The past high priests and priestesses of the temple at Bevelle were carved into the Order of Service to Yevon, in the pathway between the Second Cloister and the armoury. "Two or three hundred years ago, I believe?"

"He's brighter than you, Kinoc, isn't he? You've forgotten to tell me his name."

"He's about to be promoted," Kinoc said, and picked at a loose thread in his collar, the better to hide his eyes. "It's to be expected. He's Auron."

"I see."

She tapped his shoulder familiarly. She was tiny, and her hand came level with her eyes.

"Someone was talking to Father about you, you'll be pleased to hear."

"I am honoured," he said, and moved slightly away, he thought not enough to be noticed. "I am not about to be promoted again, Kinoc. That's only a rumour."

"It's fact," muttered Kinoc. "Everyone knows."

"Right," said the girl, and clapped her hands together, like a child.

* * *

She was clever, with a wit that was too blunt and that bruised the less fortunate, but he was skilled enough at ignoring it. She talked a lot when they met, which was often- they happened to be in the same place at the same time strangely frequently, and he never understood it then- and she laughed at him as well, for his awkwardness, and his occasional silences. He was not an awkward man, and not a quiet one, not then, the quiet came later. But he was grave, and ran only seldom to laughing, even though in age and experience he was little more than a boy. He did have optimism, and faith in the comfortable inner workings of the world- he remembers that, though he has long lost it- but it was not enough to dull a certain air about him, a look of someone who has seen too much and wishes to withdraw from the light amusements of other men. And she noticed this; and she laughed at him, and told him he should smile. The laugh has mostly stayed with him, a deep rich peal very different from the sharp inflections of her normal voice.

It had not occurred to Auron to pay attention to how she looked, and now he remembers little. She had a mop of bright red hair and a very pale face. She liked green, not the acolytes' or the monks' green but that of grass and leaves, and she liked to walk outside and surround herself with it, but with that hair and that face being in the gardens made her look like someone dying. He was fond of her, perhaps, to remember these things, but not in the way they had wanted. He does not remember her body. He never thought to watch it.

He remembers only two of their conversations well, the last two; in the last she screamed things at him that later turned out to be right, but he prefers to leave those memories alone and hope for the gradual weakening in his will to sweep them away to the Farplane with the other parts of himself he has lost. The second to last had been the day before her father called him in, to the proposal, to the refusal, and away to Braska and Jecht and all the hope and sorrow that lay ahead; he had not known any of this and he had smiled, very slightly, to see her coming up to his table, a purple flower tucked behind one ear.

"Auron." She raised a hand, in mock solemnity.

"Minna."

She had been Amina the day before, and Anima the day before that. Anima had been the high priest's daughter in the years before Mirada's father was the high priest, and had married an acolyte at Kilika. She in her turn had been named after an aunt, the woman who had infamously married a Guado.

"And where would Kinoc be today?"

"Inspection's this afternoon, he'll be in his chamber."

"Oh. I found out something about him today?"

"Yes?"

"He has a, I don't know what you're supposed to call it, he's affectionate to a certain woman?" She could pick up wit and learning, but she knew very little of idioms, or slang, or swear words; she was still the high priest's daughter, and nobody would say them to her.

"A fancy, you say. He has a fancy." He looked down at his hands. "He's told me about that, as well. Quite a young one."

"How old?" she asked.

"Seventeen, eighteen? Too young, but I don't know exactly."

"Eighteen wouldn't be too young."

"Ah, but you say that because eighteen's too close to you." He smiled at her. If she had been a sister or a cousin, he realised, he would have tweaked the end of her nose.

She returned the smile, but something in the quality of it made him anxious, made him shift his feet; it was open, it was sincere, but something deep and dark flickered awake behind her eyes, as if some new awareness of herself gazed through. He looked away.

"You don't like looking people in the eye, do you?" she said.

"I don't know," he said. "I've never noticed."

"I think you're quite secretive, really," she said. "You don't like talking about yourself much, either. You won't say what you think. You should work on that."

"If it pleases you."

Much later, after Yuna and Yunalesca, he admired her for her spirit. He wonders now what her fate was, and how closely she followed it apart from the facts of her future he knows, and if in the years of watching everyone else she had ever thought to turn her careful observation back onto herself.

* * *

When they called him in he expected it to be about the promotion to second-in-command, commander of the second cohort; though not that he had received it. Perhaps they had given it to someone else, someone new and more talented, or they would have given it to him but he was so young and it would be a few more years before he was ready.

He did not know if he wanted it. It was progress, it was affirmation, it was a new role he could take up, it was the next step in the only path he knew. It was a respectable life, and he would know no material lack or great suffering. He would be admired. He would be serving Yevon in the best way he could, and Yevon were the only way forward in the expiation required if Spira were ever to be rid of Sin. He would certainly take the promotion, if only he were older. But he was twenty-five, a grand enough number but not much more than a boy in reality, and he had seen very little besides Bevelle and the grey stone of the cloister walls, and the last steps to command seemed very heavy to climb until he knew more of the world he was supposed to be protecting.

He came early, as would be expected of him, and knocked, once.

"Come in, Auron."

He opened the door. "Your eminence."

"Do sit down."

"Thank you." The high priest's chamber was a circular room in colours that might have been cosy, were it not for the high domed ceiling, and the six long drapes with the sacred glyphs that shone bright and coldly even in the harsh machine-powered light that glittered so far above them. Auron took the only other seat in the room, about three feet from the high priest's, and low enough that his eye level was the lower of the two of them.

"I have been regaled with more tales of your faithful service, you will be pleased to know," he said, with a kindly smile he was free with, his eyes so dark above them.

"I am honoured."

"You played a prominent role in the Behemoth fiasco."

"It was only my duty, your eminence. We were most fortunate to have warning from the guard towers. The massed firepower of the second cohort was instrumental in bringing down the beasts, also."

"Yes, yes. Still. You are modest, Auron, which is all to the good, but you underestimate yourself." The high priest's smile faded. He tapped a long thin finger on the armrest of his chair; he was pale as his daughter was, and fragile-seeming, as if a light wind would blow him away to the Farplane. "I have summoned you to discuss a matter of some delicacy."

He tried not to frown. "I see."

"My daughter mentions you to me often, also," said the high priest carefully. "I think she is fond of you, and the two of you seem to relate to each other well. She is my only child, as you know, and I am most concerned for her well-being. I must confess, Auron, as the years have passed, and she has shown no aptitude for summoning, I have been - glad, almost. It would have been a wonderful thing had she had the gift, and the means to realise it, but she is so small, I do not know how far she would be able to travel, and with her mother gone, she is what I have."

"I understand, your eminence. It is only natural, surely."

The summoner's being was but one, and a Calm would be a most precious gift to bring to Spira, even at the cost of one's life: but it must be different if you knew the summoner, he supposed.

"Perhaps it is," the high priest murmured. "Perhaps it is. But I must see that she follows a righteous path, as is my care, as her father. She is of an age now where I must bestow her hand on a worthy man to receive it. She is my daughter, and who she marries is of concern to Yevon and to Spira, and not merely to she and I. And I have wondered, Auron, if you had considered your intentions in that direction. You have risen so high, so young, and I am certain you will rise further still."

For a second he is frozen in his seat, though he does not know precisely why the thought is so terrible to him. He had not considered it. He should have considered it, but it had never occurred to him. He had thought she was a friend, only a friend, in the way Kinoc was, and the others; he had not remembered that she was a young woman, and young women could not be their friends in the same way, and that she was the priest's daughter and he kept her out of the way where he could, away from men who could break her, trap her; and he was twenty-five, only twenty-five, and he had never connected the idea of marriage to himself, he had never thought of it.

"The greatest monks must know love, and partnership, to truly understand what it is they must protect," the high priest continued.

"I- I am most honoured that you have thought of me in such a way, your eminence, but I- I confess, truly, I had not considered it."

The high priest's brows draw together.

"That is all to the good," he said. "I am honoured myself that you are a man of such virtue and honour, to keep company of such a lady without thought of such things. But consider it now, Auron. It would unite the monks and the priesthood. It would be a most auspicious event in the eyes of Yevon."

It has nothing whatsoever to do with the teachings, he remembers thinking then, don't cloak it in that- it is the only thought of his then that is clear, and the one he carried away to later times, when he was trying to explain why, to tell people how he had gone wrong. There seemed a false note in the last sentence. It seemed too glib, too easy as a reason. One could say many things were auspicious in the eyes of Yevon, but it did not, it did not- Yevon had the teachings and the prayers and the atonement, but it could not control him like that, they could not tell him he must _marry -_

"I- might I have some time to consider it?

"What is there to consider?" the high priest asked gently. "I know you are fond of her. She is young, and not uncomely, and even as a strategic match it lacks nothing. I must have your answer now, Auron."

"Then I- "

It took him a while to say it. The words would form easily enough in his brain, he could imagine themselves saying them, but he could not crush together the world in which the words lay and the one in which he sat. He felt cold, heavy, dragged too deeply into his chair. He could not force anything from his mouth; he could swallow and swallow and open his mouth, but he could not speak, filled with a sudden fear he could not explain, but he had to, he had to-

"I must refuse."

The high priest's smile is gone, and his dark eyes are the only things in his face that seem real.

"Very well," he said. His voice is not cold, but the gentleness is gone from it. "You may go."

"I hope I have not displeased your eminence," he manages.

The high priest nods, once. "Thank you. You may go, Auron."

* * *

At first he does not notice. There is no overt change in the pattern of his days, and he thinks there might be another way. He does not see Mirada, but perhaps she is busy, she has her own duties. He continues as he has, with his friends and his fellows, and the stone of the cloisters that sometimes seems more real to him than his heart, and the books of war and learning in the libraries, and the new plans for the walls, for the order. He has an easy untroubled existence when he is not fighting, and the warrior monks are far greater in power than anything that assails Bevelle; anything that reaches them must go through Evrae first, and almost nothing does.

But there is a shifting, as if from age to age; people will not look at him so often as he passes, and sometimes they fall silent when he approaches. He has never paid much mind to what the others think of him and it takes him a long time to notice, and then to see what has happened. He is still respected, he is still admired, he is the youngest deputy of the cohort in the warrior monks for decades, but he is not as interesting as he was, because he is no longer a rising star. He has been fixed; trapped in the point and at the height at which he must exist forever, like a fly in amber. _The greatest monks must know love, and partnership, to truly understand what it is they must protect._ And he does not. He does not need Kinoc to explain, when his friend takes pity.

"You refused her, Auron. I am sorry to be the one to say it, but they will not forgive you that. They will not banish you, of course, you are too competent, still. But you won't be promoted again."

He does not drink often, and he did not then; but he does that night, just the once. The whiskey burns at his throat, like the tears might have, if he had cried.

He has no clarity on what has happened, or why it so wrong, but he knows that he has failed, and that he had counted at least on being commander at some point and in some fashion. He had hoped his life would sort itself, that his feelings would become known to him, that he would become clear and upright like the maesters, like the high summoners of old, but he has doomed himself, and what he is now is nothing like what he hoped he would have been. He is twenty-five, and twenty-five is old enough to know what one should do in life, and how to go about it. He will have to tell people he will never command the monks. He will have disappointed all those who hoped for him, and believed in him, and the family who loved him and watched him as he rose so far, so fast. He walks round the courtyards, with a dreamy drunken gaze but with a firm enough step to be convincing, hoping to see the moon, to gain some comfort at least in permanence, but the night is cloudy and even the stars have failed him, and he has no guidance.

It was a few days after that that she broke open his lock and squeezed herself into his room, and looked around at the stripped bed, the half-packed bag, the empty shelves and clothes strewn over the floor, and her small face seemed to close up on itself; and that was the last time they spoke. She hurled insults at him, and somewhere mixed up in that was more truth than he is comfortable thinking of now.

He did not see. He was too young. He was too afraid of looking.


	2. The only other road

A/N: I still don't own FFX, unsurprisingly enough. I'll probably update about every couple of weeks, depending on how busy I am (this semester is _sort _of busy) and be more or less this long. Maybe slightly shorter, this turned out longer than I expected. I write fairly slowly, I'm picky. I wrote this one very slowly, I've just finished summer school exams…

And thank you to the reviewer :)

* * *

He has money, a lot of money- he has never seen how to spend it- and he finds a place to stay easily enough, a little white-washed room in a lodging near the sea, very like the one he had with the monks. It has a squat window with a thick wooden frame painted deep green and peeling slightly, and it looks over the port and beaches, and the sun shines through it too brightly in the late afternoon; if he is in then he finds himself having to draw the curtains, and turn on the dim light in the ceiling, and sit half in the dark.

He could go to the port, to the beach, but he has never liked the idea of it, the sand and the salt and the sunshine, and the air that pervades the summer days and evenings, the sense of light, of fulfilment, of one's best days passing too quickly. He has always felt himself too distant from it. It is too high, too vague, like something in a dream. He feels almost as if the cheerful surface will wash away to reveal some ugly truth that before now he has never known, and now he does: that it will pass as he will pass, that his best days will leave him as it dies and the days become cold. Winter expects nothing of one, except that they endure. He can turn out to brave the days and that will be all he needs to do. Summer expects too much of him. And the ocean's edge is too tied to summer. He does walk often, now that he has nothing to do, but always the other way, into the city.

He wears his old coat, which he has not needed in the last years, a long red one edged in black and silver that he bought years ago. He can fit himself into it like armour, he finds, although people stare at him in it now, because he has become too tall, and the arm that hangs out of it is too solidly built. He does need to buy more clothes, now that his uniforms are gone, so he finds shirts and trousers, but he keeps wearing the shoes; nobody will notice.

He concerns himself with small things like this, and the peeling paint on the inns and houses of Bevelle, and the colours of the sunset and how the streets become cold and unfamiliar as the shades of the sky fade to black, and then he returns to his room, and tries to sleep. Too much sleep and too little he knows are symptoms of despair, so both of those he avoids, and he remembers to eat properly. He keeps himself up, he urges himself on, he walks and walks, but he knows his world is shrinking, and he cannot see a way ahead, or even remember very well how he got here.

* * *

He continues in this fashion for two or three weeks, feeling distant and frozen as if time and space have ceased their rigid travels, until he leaves his room one morning to find a man in the hallway that he recognises.

"Lord Braska?"

"Sir Auron," the summoner says, and bows his head.

"Auron is fine, I am no longer of the monks."

"Braska also is fine." Braska does not look as if he is a man often inclined to smiling, but he does now, just slightly. "I apologise for disturbing you so suddenly, but would you care to join me this morning? There is a café on the next street I favour greatly, and there is something I must discuss with you."

"I would be honoured."

Braska was a disgraced priest before he was a summoner, much lower down in the hierarchy of Bevelle than Auron before his departure, and he never had much to do with him; the summoner is not a popular man, tainted by the scandal of his Al Bhed wife and the daughter he had with her. Yet there is nobility, Auron feels, in his return to Bevelle after his wife's death, knowing the reception that faced him, continuing and completing the summoner's training regardless. Lord Braska has a weary face, with some of the lines of long searching and suffering, but not devoid of joy entirely. There is some light in it, some hope.

It strikes Auron suddenly that he now has much in common with this man: they have both refused to marry as the church wishes them to marry, and they have both been outcast for it.

They step out and round the corner and into the café Braska has mentioned, which Auron has seen but never entered; it does not face the sea, and the chairs and tables are of solid dark wood which feels cold and comforting under his heavy hand. He waits for the older man to pick his seat, and Braska in turn leaves him the one closest to the entrance with the cool breeze from the open door.

The waitress hovers beside them, and they both order tea.

"What did you wish to discuss?"

Braska is silent a moment. He looks as if he does not know quite how to begin.

"I wish this were but a social call," he said, "but I have come to make a request. I am sorry to be abrupt about it."

"It is nothing," he said, "don't worry."

Braska nods.

"I have recently completed my summoner's training," he said, "I am not sure if you are aware."

"I had heard. Congratulations."

"Thank you," he said, faintly. "The pilgrimage is ahead, of course. I am aware that I am not expected to succeed, I am half a heathen, they say, and they say my daughter is the child of a heathen. I do not wish that legacy to be all she has of me, of course. And to leave her alone in the world so young is not- it is not what a father should do, perhaps. But I must make a world free of Sin, for her. I would not have it that she leaves us the same way as her mother."

His wife had been killed by Sin, he remembers; it was why he became a summoner, or so they said. He had never thought about it before, what this man has lost.

"If you rid the world of Sin," he said, "it would be a legacy far greater than any other."

It is all he can say.

"It may be so." Braska purses his lips. He is very deliberate, Auron is coming to realise. Age and grief have rid him of any impulsiveness he might have possessed in the past, and what is left of him is a man who will think over his words many times before he says them. "But if I am to give her such a legacy, I must succeed, of course. And I know the chances are slim."

"I would be happy to assist," he says, a little confused. "In any way I can."

It is then that he has the first ideas of what the older man wants from him.

"I must have a guardian," Braska says, with that faint smile again. Perhaps he is mistaken about him. Perhaps Braska still finds much in the world to smile at. "And I had wondered if you would consider it."

"I see."

He does not know how to proceed from there. The tea comes on a little silver tray that the waitress sets between them, and Braska pours for them both.

"I am honoured," he says. "But may I have a day or two, to think it over? I have not thought yet as to what I will do after the monks."

"Certainly," says Braska. "It is an enormous decision, after all, and a great request to be made without notice. Take what time you need."

The summoner raises the teacup to his mouth.

* * *

He continues the rest of the day as he has continued the last few, with lunch and walking and another attempt at rearranging his books: he has only one shelf in his rooms, and about three-quarters of them fit on it. He polishes his katana every other day, and today he only goes over the armour, checking links and straps and scratches that have not been touched since last he checked them. He leaves his coat on the bed and goes in to dine: he has the inn's house dinner, and a mug of the inn's rice wine, and traces aimless symbols on the table, and finally he thinks.

A guardian?

He would be suitable for it, he supposes, but he had never thought of it.

It is not a task one can take up half-heartedly. You must commit to it entirely, or fail. You must have drive, and you must respect your summoner enough to follow them without question, and obey their last wishes, whatever they may be. That is the guardian's burden, the summoner's one privilege. Lord Braska will lose not only his life if he finishes, or falls and fails short of Zanarkand, but he will leave his daughter, and be robbed of whatever years he might have had with her- how old is his daughter? Braska is older than he is, by eight or ten years, but Auron was living in the cloisters by the time he married the Al Bhed woman, his daughter cannot be old: six or seven, no more.

He must be determined indeed, to leave her alone, that young.

Until these last weeks he has never stopped to think of himself as young. He has been a monk for nine years, he has been able to marry for seven. He has been successful. He has paved his way in the world as an adult might, he thought, despite the lack of sweethearts, of love, of terribly much beyond his work. He has been serious all his life, serious and clever and high-hearted, and people have mistaken that for maturity, but he realises anew that he has seen and done very little.

Ought he to turn Lord Braska down, if he does not yet know what he wants in life?

He does not know.

Perhaps it does not matter. He remembers distantly, from a largely untroubled adolescence, that such questions are almost useless; there is no answer to thoughts of purpose or happiness. There is life, there is death, there is Spira, there is Sin, there is whatever one makes in the world, and that is all. It is not purpose that troubles him, perhaps, but only that the world has shifted too suddenly under his feet, and that he is not accustomed to change well enough to accept it gracefully. He is impressed by Braska, he admires continuing hope, in his drive. This he knows. He is a man worthy of respect, and a man he could like, if he knew him better. His pilgrimage is a worthy cause, a celebrated cause, a chance for honour, if he wants such things as honour. He cannot serve Yevon as he first wished to serve Yevon. But this way is no less important, _more_ important even, if they succeed, and he is skilled at least and Braska has great strength- they might be enough to succeed where so far the other high summoners have failed- if they defeat Sin so that it will never return, if he ties himself to Braska's star in time for it to rise where so far none have risen.

He knows there is only the one answer.

Braska has told him where he lives, he will be at home enjoying his last days with his daughter: he will visit him tomorrow. He lines his knife and fork straight in the centre of his empty plate. In his room he lifts his katana, lifts it straight up for the first time since he left the monks, and sees a wavering reflection of himself in a blade polished now beyond need or desire; the light from the window has caught at his eyes and they glow bright like polished amber, like the shining pyreflies swirling endlessly in a sphere.

* * *

He feels better the next day: some of the numbness has left him, and he appreciates the sun on his face, the slight breeze of the late summer morning. Braska's house is not far from him, twenty or twenty-five minutes' walk, he does not need to hire a carriage; it is in a busy street, far from the centre of the city, far from the temple, but there is a small park almost directly across from him, and he has a view of the water, for those who appreciate such things.

He has a large brass knocker: Auron taps it, and Braska appears in the door as quickly as if he were expecting him.

"I hope this is not a bad time?"

"No, no," Braska assures him. "The house is not tidy, you must forgive me. My daughter has been begging to do some painting and I am afraid I have obliged her."

"Of course, my lord. It is hardly a crime."

Braska laughs. "Come in."

The sitting-room is small and crowded with piles of books and mismatched furniture and odd things in the corners, a stuffed bird, some child's paintings tacked to the walls, and what looks like scraps from some sort of machina behind an armchair, which he decides to overlook. There is a weak light in the ceiling and a large window very like the one in his own chamber, and the walls are papered cream, with an odd design of twining spirals and leaves in gold and green. In the centre of the floor stands a small child in a faded print dress, who turns to them as they enter.

"This is Yuna," he introduces her, "my daughter."

The girl waves a hand at him. She is tiny, with dark hair cut around her chin and a child's chubby cheeks, but she has a peculiar dignity in her small person. She stands very straight, and her eyes are bright and eager and aware. They do not have the Al Bhed spirals, but one is green and the other Braska's blue.

"Yuna, this is my friend Auron," Braska prompts, smiling now, as ever. "Say hello. Auron, do sit down."

"Hello," Yuna says obediently, and turns to her father. "But Daddy, I _waved._"

"You did, sweetheart, I saw." He rests a hand on her shoulder. "Would you like tea, Auron? Or coffee? Or we have juice somewhere, I think, apple or orange, or shoopuf milk, this one likes her shoopuf milk…"

"Tea would be lovely."

Braska bustles off to make it, and Auron is left with his daughter, who stares at him now as if not quite sure how to place him.

"How do you know my father?"

_Daddy_ is only for Braska himself, he sees, and to everyone else Yuna must give him authority. The effect is marred only by the smears of paint on her face.

"I met him at the temple," he said. "We used to work together, sort of."

Yuna stares at him a few second longer with her nose scrunched up in thought- the intent blank stare of a child, without the tact to measure her gaze, or the depth of thought to give any real scrutiny- and nods.

"The temple doesn't like him," she said. "Wait, I'm not supposed to talk about that." Her little face furrows into a frown. "You can look at my pictures if you like."

He obliges. There are four or five of them set in front of her, drying.

"That's my father in his new robe," Yuna says, and nods at one on her left. "That's our house. And this one's the Farplane." She waves to the right. There is a round brown circle and great swirls of blue and white and purple, and directly above the circle a pink and yellow blob in the vague shape of a person, that she points to with the end of her brush. "And that's my mother at the top of it."

"They're very good." He has never been good with children, and he knows he is sitting too stiffly in his chair, but the child beams at him anyway.

Braska returns, with a pot of tea and cookies on a china tray.

"Now. You are the first after us to test the biscuits, I'm afraid, we made them yesterday." He looks at his daughter. "Yuna, would you like to go and wash out your brushes, please?"

"Yes, Daddy."

Yuna wraps them up in a cloth and gathers the bundle in both arms, and scampers away.

"They look very good." He takes the cup Braska offers him and manages to balance one on the edge of the saucer. "Will you take your daughter to the priests, when you leave?"

"Yes. They will care for her, in respect for what I am doing. I have told her what is happening, though I am not sure she understands it completely, I will have to explain again." He sighs. "I have found people who wish to buy the house."

Auron says, hesitantly, "I would be honoured to accept your offer, sir."

Braska smiles often, but not like this; this one transforms his face, makes lights of his eyes.

"That is excellent!" he cries. "I am the one who is honoured, Auron, truly. That is wonderful news, my friend. We shall journey together, to Zanarkand, and the Calm will come again, if I am worthy. There must be explanations, then. We must prepare. I know you will have errands to run before you depart, how long do you wish to have for those?"

"I will be ready when you are, sir." The tea is cold enough to drink; perhaps he has not made it as hot as one ought to in colder months, but Auron appreciates it. He takes a careful bite out of the biscuit.

"That is good. That is very good."

Braska pauses a moment, as if to collect himself.

"I will have more than adequate money for the journey from the sale of the house," he says. "You need not worry about that, it is my task, I am the summoner. I have prayed to the fayth here in Bevelle, clearly, I have trained here. But my route as I have it currently is through Macalania first. We will pray at the temple there second, then through the Thunder Plains and Guadosalam, across the Moonflow to Djose, then down the Mi'ihen Highroad to Luca, to Kilika and Besaid by ship, and then back the same way and north to the Calm Lands, as we must."

"That is certainly the most convenient way, my lord, though I confess many of those are merely names and words in my books, to me."

"You are young, Auron, that is no crime. I have most of what we need by way of possessions, though I am perhaps short in arms, I will procure more weapons and armour."

"I imagine I could find some with the monks," he says, and thinks of Kinoc, and wonders how he has been going.

"That would save a great deal of time. I must pack up the house, and settle Yuna in with the priests, and really I think, after that, there is but one more large task."

It is strange, he thinks, how this man, his master now, can look upon the casual dismantling of his life as so easily done: but then Braska's life has been dismantled before, and again, and each time he has picked himself up from it. Perhaps there are only so many changes he can have, before he ceases to be surprised at them. "My lord?"

"There is a man in the cells," Braska says. "The monks believe he is affected by Sin's toxin. He claims he is from Zanarkand, and that Sin swept him up and tossed him to us as he was training for blitzball there."

"An unfortunate man," he says, "but what of it, my lord? Might he have information?"

"I do not think so." Braska tapped his fingers on the side of his chair. "The problem I have, I looked into it, briefly… he is coherent, apparently. Whatever it is that is wrong with him, I do not think it is the toxin. He is a fighter, they say. And two guardians would be a help, the strain is sometimes too much on one, their pilgrimages are fraught with danger and too often end in early failure. I would like to see him for myself."

"That seems… wise."

He laughs. "Well, there is no time like the present, as they say. If the monks are less than willing to aid us, it will take a while to source proper weapons. I shall find Yuna. She is able for her age, but still she ought not to remain here by herself."

* * *

It is mid-afternoon by the time they reach the temple. Yuna does not cling to her father's hand: her face and dress are cleaned of paint, and for a seven-year-old she has a grave expression, when it does not occur to her to smile. Braska is in his ceremonial robe and headdress, which he has apparently chosen as his pilgrimage attire. It takes Auron a while to realise why: he will not be taken seriously as he is, the people will not understand, they will not support him unless they think he will succeed, so he must give himself as much authority as possible. He is like his daughter, with her sharp differentiation between what she and other men may call him.

Braska and Yuna split off from him, to the priests that will care for Yuna, so that the summoner may show his daughter around the quarters where she will live, and perhaps try to impress on her a more complete sense of what is happening. He makes his way back with heavy feet to the monks' area of the temple, to the armoury.

It is Kinoc there, as is expected at such a time: the second-in-command has charge over the armoury in the early evenings, it being the traditional hour of warning among the monks, if superstitions are to be believed.

"Auron, my friend. I was told you were coming."

"Is that good news?"

Kinoc laughs, and steps forward, and clasps his hand. "You're going to be Lord Braska's guardian, I hear. I must admit, I was worried. But you seem to be doing well for yourself, even given his… well. It does not matter, if one is to journey, does it?"

"No."

"Well, how have you been? Where have you been hiding?"

"Here and there," he says. "Not much has happened. I will say, it is good to see you, though strange to be back."

"It would be." Kinoc nods, solemnly. "I do suspect you are not here _entirely_ for the pleasure of my company."

"You suspect rightly, my friend."

"And what do you desire from these racks this day?"

"Bracers," he says. "Perhaps poison protections. And perhaps a shield or two, though I don't see I'll learn to use it."

"Oh, just come in, Auron."

He follows Kinoc inside. He knows where the bracers are, has used them, has cleaned them and stored them, has guarded this armoury as Kinoc is doing now; he picks one of the shelf and examines the row of glyphs around the edge.

"You still use shields yourself, I presume?"

Kinoc shrugs. "I tried with the bracers, but the katanas are too damn heavy. I tried with the armlets too, but spearwork's beyond me, as well. I'll stick to the swords. Terrible for piercing, but quicker, and there's history enough behind them to be respectable. Here, take that serum bracer, and we found a couple of haste ones, too. Very valuable. And useful for you, because you're slow. Take one."

He picks them both carefully up and places them into his bag.

"Thanks, Kinoc."

Kinoc dips his head.

"I know I don't need to tell you this," he says, "but guard Lord Braska well." Kinoc is not accustomed to praising him. There is no need. Kinoc is his friend too much to dismiss him by setting him too high above him. He is envious too, a little, but he has always overcome this, or ignored it, or on the worst days tried his best not to show it.

"That, I will. And you'll be busy, too."

Kinoc sighs.

"You know that promotion was meant for you," he says, his voice carefully empty. "You were always the better one, even until the end."

It is well meant, he knows, even though Kinoc cannot say it properly, _because_ Kinoc cannot say it properly, because he has always been overshadowed and he cannot admit it.

"You make it sound as if I was going off to die or something. I will see you again."

"Yes."

They stand silently for a moment, with, he suspects, nearly identical looks, of confusion, of uncertainty.

"Well, then…"

"Going already?" he asks. "You will tell me about Zanarkand when you return, won't you?"

He smiles. It is too like Kinoc, to worry, to whittle at the edges of his inferiority problems, to endlessly seek reassurance. He need not fear.

"Farewell."

* * *

Auron must accompany Braska to see the other man, this potential other guardian, and he arrives first: Braska turns up a few minutes later with Yuna in tow, the pair of them uncharacteristically silent. The girl waits by the entrance as the guard beckons the two of them forward.

His first sight of him is broken by the bars. He is lying on his side, as if ill, and Auron can see even from this distance the trembles in his hands that come to those prisoners who have spent long years drinking, and find their obsession and comfort robbed from them very suddenly. When his voice comes it is hoarse from recent disuse.

"Who are you?"

Braska remains as polite as ever.

"You are the one they call Jecht, the man from Zanarkand, are you not?"

"What of it?" asks the prisoner, not even bothering to rise, and it is this that bothers him most; he rushes up at once.

"Watch your tongue, knave!"

Braska looks over at him, and nods, very slightly.

"My apologies," he says to the other man, still calm. "I am Braska, a summoner. I've come to take you from this place."

The man finally gets to his feet. He moves well, Auron realises, with a wild animal's unthinking grace, an ease in his step he has likely had for so long he does not need to think about how to move; the few facts that Braska mentioned come back to him: this man is a sportsman, though one past his best. His eyes are a curious colour, too red to be brown, with pupils that suck deep: he finds himself having to look away.

"Sounds sweet. What's the catch?"

Braska laughs.

"That easy to see, was it? I soon leave on a pilgrimage. To Zanarkand."

"Seriously?"

"I would like you to join us. It will be a dangerous trip. Yet if we do reach Zanarkand, my prayers will be answered, and you will be able to go home, we think. What say you?"

"Great, let's go!"

"So quick?"

"Anything to get outta here!"

Braska smiles.

"Then it's settled."

"But I must protest," he says, finally, too late to be useful, he sees, too late to change anything. "This… drunkard… a guardian?"

He and Braska are not in favour with the church, but they are still better than this man, this wastrel, they have not fallen so low as that.

"Hey!" yells the prisoner, and spreads his arms wide, as if to prepare for a fight. "You want to step in here and say that?"

He ignores him.

"What does it matter?" Braska asks simply. "No one truly believes that I, a fallen summoner wed to an Al Bhed, could possibly defeat Sin. That is what they say. No one expects us to succeed."

He winces. Lord Braska is not a man prone to despair, and he must keep a will of iron if he is ever to arrive at the ruined city, and give his life. He cannot care what anyone else thinks, he cannot let it affect him, he cannot imbibe those attitudes and apply them to himself, he cannot fall simply because they expect him to. And he cannot say this with his daughter nearly in earshot, his seven-year-old daughter, who cannot have her father abandon her for anything more than complete conviction.

"Braska. Sir."

"Let's show them they're _wrong_. A fallen summoner, a man from Zanarkand, and a warrior monk doomed to obscurity for refusing the hand of the priest's daughter! What delightful irony it would be if we defeated Sin!"

He nearly smiles; he very nearly smiles. It touches him where humour rarely touches. There _is_ an irony to it, an irony he can appreciate. He has never been the outcast, he has never had to prove himself, and so he does not entirely understand this feeling, this idea of rising above low expectations, this proving yourself to those who do not believe in you. He has always been the golden boy, the example. But he understands Braska's near-recklessness, his acceptance of this other man, this man they cannot trust, this man they do not know, because they will try, of course, the pilgrimage must consume them: but if they do not have the pilgrimage, how much further down is there to go?

He does not know the depths to which a man can sink, but this does not at the time occur to him: so he accedes.

"Stop gabbing and get me outta here!" the prisoner demands.

Braska waves to the guard. It is a simple task, a simple lock, and in seconds their new companion is before them, stretching his arms.

"Free at last!"

"Now, Jecht. I am in your hands until we reach Zanarkand."

"Right, right." He looks around. "So, what's a summer-ner, anyway?"

Braska laughs again. The new man might be good, Auron realises, if he can do that: someone has to make the pilgrimage lighter, and he is not the man to do it.

"It is a long explanation. I will save it for later."

"If you say so." Jecht turns to him, now, weighs him in his gaze for a second, and lets him go. "So, what's your name, then?"

He lifts his chin.

"Auron."


	3. An empty house, an empty bottle (1)

**A/N: I don't own FFX. It's very disappointing. Sorry about the gap: uni's started up again and my workload's fairly heavy this semester, and I had a few problems to work through with the story. (I also turned twenty. Which is _really_ weird.) Mostly got through that now, so: chapter 3. Well, actually only ****half**** of Chapter 3. Chapter 3 in its entirety is longer than I really want to do chapters, so I split it around the middle.**

**That said, ****I write slowly and I'm a terrible procrastinator, so I anticipate future apologies will also be in order. ****Although the second half of chapter 3 will be up much sooner than this was, especially since it's already half-written.**

* * *

Chapter 3: An empty house, an empty bottle- part 1

Whether Jecht is affected by the toxin, whether he is delusional from drink or the carnage that Sin has dealt him, he seems to genuinely believe that he has come from Zanarkand: and not the Zanarkand they know, not the ruins that are all that is left of whatever stood there. His Zanarkand is whole and perfect, untainted even by Sin, and completely ignorant of Yevon- except for the one gesture they have somehow taken and divorced from the prayer, which he believes is some sort of blitzball sign for victory. It has machina, it runs on machina, in their houses and parks and stadiums, their lights are machina, their wagons, their kitchens. Auron imagines a city of harsh silver angles, and constant clanking, and pale downcast people who are too cold and mechanical themselves to care anything for life and laughter.

Blitzball is the only thing in Spira he seems to have real knowledge about. He believes he is a star blitzball player, that in his Zanarkand he played in a team called the Abes and was so famous he was mobbed in the streets. Auron anticipates him continuing on to talk about the adoring fans, the girls hanging on his every word, but to his surprise Jecht continues only to talk about his wife.

"Met her years ago," he says. "Childhood sweethearts, all that. I have a son, too. About your little girl's age, Braska, except he's a real crybaby."

"They grow," says Braska, rather absently. He and Yuna are on the far chair, ostensibly trying to knit her a hat, and the child has managed to pull hanks of wool round and round her fingers and through the armrest and into the buttonholes of her father's coat. "How old were you when he was born?"

Jecht snorts, his harsh and hacking version of a laugh. "Twenty-three."

He is thirty then, more or less; five years younger than Braska, five years older than Auron, but closer in experience to the older man, if he has a child as well. He looks about that age, or slightly older. He is in good shape considering what he drinks, better than Braska, almost as fit as Auron himself, but learning the new styles and moves required for finding fiends is not coming naturally to him. He has shaped himself to swim, to dodge, not for swinging and chopping. They have given him a light sword for now. Braska has Bahamut and the others to come, and his magic and his rod, but Auron will have to do the heavy work.

"So what happens to this place?" Jecht asks, and waves a hand around him. "You renting it? Wait, have you even got renting here?"

"What's renting?"

"Ah, never mind." He looks disappointed. "Well?"

"I have sold it," Braska explains. "I have three days left; then we go."

"Then what d'you do after you defeat this Sin thing? They give you a fancy house as a thank-you, or what?"

They have not yet informed Jecht of the fate of a summoner, alluding only to the danger of the task. Perhaps Braska cannot bring himself to say it precisely in front of Yuna, whose comprehension of death is clear enough but still hazy as it applies to her father, or perhaps it is too clear to themselves released beyond thought and history; whatever the reason, they have not said it.

"It is a long journey," Braska said, "and I do not wish to count on my success."

"But you gotta."

"What?" Braska looks as puzzled as he is. Yuna is listening, her head cocked slightly to the side, but most of the meaning is probably going over her head.

"This trip, it's dangerous, right? You gotta be confident, then. It's like blitzball." He spreads his hands. He is often pleased with himself, Auron has noticed, he has an ego beyond almost everyone else he has known: and this is one of those times. "You don't play just to _try your best,_ you play 'cause you're gonna win. You're not starting this thing just to get as far as you can, or whatever. You _finish._"

"Mind yourself," he snaps at the older man. It is sound advice, perhaps, but they are not fools, they have grasped this already.

"Hey," Jecht says, unperturbed, "you know I'm right."

"_Regardless_." Braska's louder voice is not very loud. "I need the money if I am to fund the pilgrimage, and the house would only lie empty after we leave."

"What about this one?" Jecht nods over at Yuna.

"With the priests," Auron says, very shortly, before she can realise what they are talking about. "Ask your questions later."

"_Fine_."

Jecht is a drunkard, and petty and sour with that and whatever else has brought him to his cell in the cloisters, and ignorant of some of the most basic matters in life- but he does not seem stupid, exactly. He grasps concepts quickly when they are put to him, and he reads people well. He is not deferential to Braska precisely, but he is very seldom outright rude to him, and never to Yuna: it is Auron for whom he spares his whining, and boasting, and casual insults.

"Bevelle have a blitzball team?" he asks instead. "They any good?"

* * *

They are both staying at Braska's house until their departure. It has only his bed and Yuna's; Jecht has the couch, and he himself is on the floor in the same room, with his bedroll. It is not entirely unfamiliar to him. He has found it necessary to sleep in tents in the past, on missions, between tasks and fights, and after the deceptive softness of the bed in his room on the beachfront there is something nearly comforting in it: the floor is cold and hard, but real, the world is close again. But he has not shared a bedroom since he donned the full warrior monk's robes and moved out of the trainees' quarters, and that he finds unsettling. He does not like the idea of being seen in his sleep, of watching others in their dreams. And Jecht snores, and grumbles, and the house is not large enough to contain him; too long for the couch, he stretches out without relaxing, like a wild animal ready to pounce.

"Too damn quiet," he mutters.

"Go to sleep."

"I _can't._ You ain't got no noise here. No cars. Or clubs, or blitzball night games, or neighbours playing music at three in the morning so you have to yell at them to shut up. You ain't got nothing."

"What are you talking about?" He can hear the faint distant hum of the city, and the ceaseless hymn of the fayth at the temple and beyond that the barely audible rhythm of the sea.

"You try going to sleep when all you can hear is your own damn heart."

"You're being selfish, and obstinate, and if this is the drink-"

"It's not about the whisky." Jecht managed to find some earlier in the day, while Braska was delivering Yuna to the priests and saying his final farewell; Auron decided the summoner did not need to be troubled with it, and poured it down the sink. The bathroom still has a sickly smell to it, like vinegar and cleaning fluids. "I'm just saying, you ain't got nothing going on at night here."

"You'll get used to it."

"It better not be long," he says ominously. "I'll be back where I came from soon enough, away from you and all this saying what I can't do."

* * *

They are to leave very early in the morning. Braska does not want to be watched as they leave, and they must make the agency at Lake Macalania before dark, there is no place on the light-path to camp. He has never been a good sleeper, and rest does not comes easily to him on that last night, his bag at his feet waiting only for the extra food, Jecht six feet away and grumbling in his sleep: the curtains are slightly too short for the window, and there are shafts of moonlight cast through the window at each. One is over Jecht's face, and the older man twitches as if he can feel it. Auron glances at him a moment, and quickly looks away. He watches the other light instead, which spreads over the newly-polished floor now bare of paintings of furniture or any of the possessions that Braska will never need again.

The time passes unevenly: he is not sure if he sleeps again, or how long before. For an age the moonlight is of the same quality, unchanging. He thinks, but of nothing of consequence: he goes back to his old life, strides the cloisters with Kinoc, with the trainees, he is accepted into the school, he is a boy again, running through streets, being asked by his father why he never smiles. He cannot think back to a time before he was aware of himself as a person looked on by other people. He has always been conscious of the impressions he gives: and he wonders now what he is becoming, but in an idle, blank sort of way. Life goes on. He cannot see what might happen. He does not have the strength to dwell too intensely on the future.

The sky beyond the curtain is lighter, he realises: Braska's door is opening and the summoner emerges, already dressed. He does not look as if he has slept any better than Auron, probably grieving still for the parting from his daughter.

"It's time," he says, rather hoarsely.

"All right, my lord." He raises his voice. "Jecht. Wake up."

He rolls up his bedroll and blanket and folds them into his bag as the blitzball player stirs and curses and stumbles into the bathroom: he dresses in the empty room beside Braska's that used to be Yuna's. It is he who is first out. Jecht is second, glaring at him, red eyes glowing eerily in the half-light. Braska pauses at his doorway and stares a long moment before he closes and locks the door; he leaves the key under the mat, as he has been told to.

Bevelle is quiet, in this hour before the dawn: the streets are empty and most of the lights are out, like a ghost town, the way you might imagine Zanarkand to be. They are nearly noiseless as they walk: Jecht moves like a cat and Auron is used to making himself quiet, and Braska makes noise as he steps, but even he is not given to make his presence known in his footsteps; Jecht looks over the silent city with unmistakable bewilderment, with something close to grief. They take the road up that leads to the palace, and round in the great curve around the outside of the fence, and up into the public part of it, even the halls here silent this early: they have nothing to stop for, and after a few minutes they pass quietly through the city exit; the guards watch them, but apparently they are beneath notice.

Highbridge stretches out before them, dark and silent, and beyond it the great dark mass of Macalania Woods. Jecht stares a moment and reaches into his bag: his hand emerges with, of all things, a movie sphere.

"What are you taking?" he asks.

"Well, you said it was gonna be a long trip." He is obviously pleased with himself; he smiles, the sort of smile Auron has come to recognise, when he intends to be annoying, in the sort of way a disobedient child is annoying. "We'll be seeing a lot of neat things, right? So I thought I'd record it all in this. To show to my wife and kid, you know."

It will be a very long time before he understands this; here and now he is only exasperated.

"This is no pleasure cruise!"

Jecht ignores him. "Hey, Braska. Ain't this supposed to be a grand occasion? Where're the cheering fans? The crying women?"

"This is it. Too many goodbyes, people think twice about leaving."

"Hmmm..."

Jecht still does not know the pilgrimage will kill Braska, he still thinks it is but a journey that he can finish and return to his Zanarkand, after a few weeks, a couple of months, provided they find in themselves the will to continue. But the older man suspects something. Auron does not see this now. It is after he tells him that he realises, and Jecht only knows there is something not quite right with what they have told him this far: but he is too distracted, he thinks only of what Jecht is saying. And there are other things. The summoner died, that was known in Spira well enough, but there had never been a pilgrimage even when all the guardians survived. He dismissed this most of his life, because there had not been a successful pilgrimage for ninety years, perhaps the guardians were simply not kept track of. He assumes now that Yevon kept it quiet, as they kept so much quiet, but he is no longer in Spira, he will never know for sure.

"If you say so," Jecht says. "Well, it better be a lot more colourful when we come back. A parade for Braska, vanquisher of Sin!"

Braska manages a laugh. "We should go. Day will break soon."

So they start out across the bridge, Jecht filming as they walk: he tries his best to ignore him, though he is beginning to see he is no good at it, the older man always finds some way to catch his unwilling attention.

"Don't see why we had to leave this damn early, either."

"It is perhaps best that we do not attract attention," Braska explained. "I am not the favourite of the aspiring high summoners, there are men and women of better fame and reputation."

"So what, they want to stop you? Don't seem like there's much of a point, if you get me."

"No. They would not. I simply thought it best to go unnoticed, if possible."

"For us as well," the blitzball player said, shrewdly. "I ain't exactly the talk of the town either. Or this one either, I guess. So what d'you do then, Auron? Spit it out."

"This has been mentioned already," he said coldly. "The high priest of Bevelle wished me to marry his daughter. It had no relevance to the teachings of Yevon, it was an alliance without purpose. I refused."

Jecht was silent.

"Nothing to say? If you're about to insult me, get it over with."

"I ain't got nothing to say," he said. "Seems kinda weird, though. They oughta let you marry who you want, if you ask me."

After that they walk along Highbridge in silence.

He had thought initially that Yevon gave out grants of money to cover the costs of pilgrimage, but apparently this extends only to the favoured candidates. As Braska must have known all along, they are travelling solely on his house money, and Auron's savings, in his own case. He does not need to take the summoner's money, he is able to pay for his own food, and he will be more than able to work again if he survives this, though he cannot say what he would do or where he would go. He has never travelled, except when his duties have required it: this is a duty as well, he supposes, but it demeans it somehow, to call it that.

Jecht, who owns nothing but the clothes he wore in his cell, is entirely reliant on them for his livelihood. He does not ask for finer food or luxuries than they can afford, but Auron is discomforted to see Braska with a jug of wine at the store they find for their extra food, enough to last them to Guadosalam.

"Is that a good idea, Lord Braska?" he asks quietly, as the shopgirl counts out the money. "The drink?"

"He will be easier to get along with if we do not deprive him of it." Braska accepts his change with the kind smile he bestows so easily. "And he has been a heavy drinker for a long time, I suspect. It can be detrimental to the health if one is to stop suddenly."

"If you believe it is best, my lord."

* * *

They make good time; they run into a few fiends, but they are more than a match for them, with Braska's magic and Auron's sword and Jecht's bumbling _already_ half-drunk attempts at fighting. They arrive at the travel agency in Macalania a little after lunchtime, early enough to make the journey to the temple and return before dark. Jecht spends most of the last part grumbling at the cold, hands tucked into his pockets, sword sheathed at his belt: one would think his Zanarkand dwells in eternal summer, listening to his complaints.

Jecht appears interested in the travel agency, and decides he wants a film of it: he passes the sphere to Braska, who tries in vain to capture them in the same frame.

"Auron, could you stand closer to him?"

He reluctantly moves towards Jecht, keeping a good six feet away, and Braska tips the sphere up to film the sign.

"Good," he says, after a second, "that should do it."

"What's the matter?" Jecht sneers at him, turning towards him. "Afraid I might bite?"

"Jecht…" He is tired already, of his taunts, his complaints, his arrogance; he does not see how he will endure it: he must endure it, of course, but the pilgrimage looms long and bleak before him.

"Braska!" Jecht says, more enthusiastically. "You should take one, too. It'd make a great gift for little Yuna!"

He will have to be told at some point: perhaps sooner might be better. Braska only nods.

"I suppose."

"Lord Braska," he says, "we shouldn't be wasting our time like this."

"What's the hurry, man?"

"Let me _tell_ you what the hurry is!"

"Auron!" Braska says, as sharply as he has yet spoken, and the summoner's sad blue eyes meet his own, only for a second, but enough.

He dips his head.

"We must keep up with the other summoners, Jecht," Braska explains, more kindly. "They obviously have advantages we do not, with the church and the people, so we must make good time, as well. It will go easier for us if we do not fall behind."

"All right, all right."

They have hired craft from travel agency to take them across the lake to the temple: they are machina, he sees, but Braska and Jecht do not appear bothered by the fact, and he cannot find it in himself to object. They run like sleds, but with levers and some sort of propelling device, and the steering is done by pulling the handles from side to side. Jecht is much better at manipulating the craft than either of them: he speeds ahead too quickly and has to stop and wait.

"Slowpokes," he calls back to them, as they approach, tentatively, the ice falling away at either side: the temple lies across a frozen stretch of lake, and a long crevasse, and beyond that only a thin ribbon of ice and stone that winds out across the dark.

"What?"

"It's a thing we say in - hey, look, never mind. How much further can we take these things?"

"Not far," Braska says.

They drive the final part of the crevasse out in single file, keeping close, and leave the craft at the end: there is a tented archway and then the ice path, and the Hymn of the Fayth close and comforting, and the temple rising before them and the water far below. Jecht glances out and makes what seems a nearly instinctive movement to his belt, where his wine jug sits; he unties the knots around the handle and takes a long swig.

"Do you _have_ to do that?"

"You seen the width of that path?" Jecht stabs a finger at it. "Come on, let's get this over with."

So they begin, Auron first, Jecht last, Braska between them: the summoner should always be in the centre, in case of fiends.

"So, I still don't get how all this works," Jecht says abruptly. Auron does not turn. "You go on this pilgrimage thing, do the praying at the temples and get these _aeons_, and then kill this Sin thing, I got that down. But how'd you do it? Do we just fight it at the end with you doing your summony thing?"

"There is a Final Aeon at Zanarkand," Braska says. "Or so it is said. There are no… no records. It is a being of immense power, much stronger than the other aeons. A summoner calls the Final Aeon to defeat Sin, and then brings the Calm."

He nods. "So people have done this before."

"They have."

"It doesn't work, then, it comes back, this Sin."

"It always has, yes. Yevon teaches that Sin may be exorcised when we have fully atoned for our sins- that is, the ones we committed in the machina war, a thousand years ago."

"Machina?"

"Devices such as the craft we travelled on, that run on machina power. The teachings of Yevon are that they can be turned too easily to destruction- well- they can be useful, in some specific cases, for some- but we misused them. In the war."

Jecht gives him a curious look.

"Right. Yeah, we call them _machines._"

"Do you use them often?"

"All the time." He shrugs.

"Sin destroyed Zanarkand because it was a machina city," Braska says. "So it is said."

"That's the second time you've said that, _so it is said._ They let you have any opinions yourselves, or what?"

"It is- it is complicated," Braska says. "I am a summoner. I must follow the church's teachings. If I dissent, if there are ways perhaps in which I think there might be room for views beyond them- I am on my pilgrimage, I cannot express them. It does not bind you, do not fear. Your task is only to protect me, you may speak and think as you will."

"Alright." He does not look convinced, but to Auron's relief he does not pursue the point. "And you ain't got no idea what Zanarkand looks like now."

"No. Well, it is said it is in ruins. Certainly nobody lives there. We will see for ourselves, and perhaps then your questions might be answered."

"Alright, _alright_, but I tell you, this whole Yevon thing seems pretty damn weird to me."

But he hums the first bars on the Hymn under his breath as they walk up the stairs and into the temple.

The priests approach them at once. They are kind enough to them, in that they bow and smile and give Braska the gifts expected for a summoner, but they are not quite as effusive in their support as he had anticipated- perhaps he simply had a too-grand idea of the summoner's journey. They have all heard of Braska; a few recognise Auron; Jecht goes almost unnoticed in their wake.

"Just keep quiet," he instructs the older man, perhaps too harshly.

They are shown up the stairs to the doors through to the Trials; Auron holds the door open for Braska, and Jecht dodges through after him.

He has never heard an account of the Trials, even a second-hand one or a third-hand one, from priests or monks or failed summoners. He expected fiends, perhaps: there are none, and he realises feeling slightly foolish that there would never be any inside a temple, even as a test. There is a short plain of ice and a bridge across it they are evidently meant to somehow construct, and a few curious-looking icicles, and stone carvings around the edge of the area, some with spheres in them.

Braska says, "Curious."

Jecht says, "But what the hell-"

"We must have to move the spheres."

They look around. Apart from the spheres and the bridge and the icicles, there is nothing.

"Very well."

* * *

Braska must enter the Chamber alone: he and Jecht wait, and Jecht drinks, and grumbles, and paces, like a lion in a cage. He is not worried about the praying. The fayth of Bahamut entrusted Braska with his aeon, and Bahamut is oldest and most powerful of the five; many summoners are less confident, they travel to Besaid or Kilika first, and try for one of the easier ones. Braska is neither particularly old or young for a summoner- most have lived enough that they may face death with as little regrets as are possible- and Auron does not know why he might be more powerful. He has suffered more than most, in his ostracising, in his wife's death, in the refusal of both the church and his wife's family to truly accept his daughter; but there is also the fact that he _has_ been ostracised.

It seems the fayth do not care; he emerges quickly enough, with a smile on his face.

"I have Shiva," he says.

"That is excellent news, my lord."

"Yeah, yeah, sounds good, can we go eat?"

"_Jecht-_"

"Calm down, Auron, I'm just messing with you." He cannot tell if Jecht is drunk; he drinks enough that he can conceal it, to a point. He can manage not to slur and he is steady on his feet; he is mean, but he always seems mean, he always teases, he always complains. He has known him a week and he plays on his mind as skilfully as a pianist. "That's great, Braska. Let's go back."

* * *

They return, Auron first, Jecht last, Braska between them, as it should be: they give back the snowcraft and eat dinner out of their packs. The lodge is empty enough at this time of year that they have separate rooms, and for the first time in several days Auron finds himself alone.

He listens to the silence.

His blade is notched, very slightly, and not quite clean; he takes out his cloths and his polish, and sets the blade across the table, and smiles to himself.

* * *

**A/N: I haven't really decided whether or not to use the hidden aeons yet, to be honest, but I assume Auron doesn't know about them at this point, so no mention here. I'm aware this bit's kind of choppy as well, which I'm trying to work on... But I hope you like it so far. More reviews would be awesome :) **


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